Electrical receptacles have long been used for supplying power to various types of devices, such as refrigerators, fans, electric typewriter, and the like. One problem common to relatively all types of residential, commercial and industrial environments utilizing electrical power outlet receptacles is the positioning of the same in a manner so as to facilitate both convenience and cost efficiency. More recently, this problem has been exacerbated by the proliferation of additional devices for computing and communications, such as complex telephone stations, computers, video displays, and numerous stand alone computer peripherals such as hard disk drives, tape drives, modems, printers, multimedia kits and the like. As many more of these computer-controlled peripheral devices are made available to the consumer market, electrical power distribution and its related issues are fast becoming problems requiring satisfactory solutions.
Some devices of a computer system are capable of being fed electrical power by other devices whereby potentially saving the usage of a few wall/extension cord receptacles. But most of the stand alone computer-controlled devices require separate lines connected to the wall receptacles and/or extension cord receptacles for electrical power. As the number of devices increases, electrical cabling behind a computer system become very messy to the eyes and very inconvenient to the users if any changes in configuration are to be made to the computer system.
Furthermore, typical multiple-receptacle extension cords on the floor or otherwise mounted onto furniture assemblies can not regulate the flow of electrical power on a receptacle-by-receptacle basis. Some cords available today do have ON-OFF switches controlling the flow of electrical power from the wall outlets to all of the receptacles but even so, none provides an ON-OFF switch for each receptacle. Being able to control individual receptacles is a desirable feature because in many occasions, portions of a computer system need not to be ON for user operations and having those portions OFF provide significant savings in the long run. There are modular power centers having multiple receptacles in the market today catering to computer systems whereby an ON-OFF switch is provided for each associated receptacle. But the existing power centers can not provide the maximum number of receptacles because of the waste of precious wall space due to the use of the off-the-shelve receptacle components.
Therefore, it is desirable to have a power center for a computer system providing as many electrical receptacles as possible for the computer system in the smallest amount of wall space possible.